Takeoff 2016

I do wish 2016 would 'take off' as the Americans would say...
Best thing to happen in 2016 for me...
Thanks for the invite / for your attention
@dmgarland
Creative Person
12 years in web development
Teach web development
Founder of We Got Coders, a training company and consultancy in UK
Wannabe Digital nomad
New York 3 months - I'm a digital nomad

I ♥ Lille

Lille resident and formerly worked for a startup at Eurotech
It's great to be back in lovely Lille....
Francophile / amateur French speaker
Music - synthesist and keyboardist
I play for a band called Sweet Billy Pilgrim - I used to travel back
from Lille every Wednesday night to rehearse / gig
TODO - expand into slide with rehearsal / arts bar
A century since the Battle of the Somme. Seventy-five years since the Pearl Harbour attack, 50 since the start of China's cultural revolution and 15 since 9/11. Twitter turns 10.
Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Keith Emerson, Cryuff. Terror attacks.
Trump for president?

How To Rescue Tech Migrants From Brexit

What I'll talk about...

Probably a lot of Brits looking to escape the UK soon

What life is like for digital nomads

How to on-board developers, especially Brits

What we do at We Got Coders

Probably the only good thing to come out of it was that Cameron was
sad and lost his job.
Dimitri Payet
N'Golo Kanté
It's made worse by the fact we were all smarmy when Hollande got in,
saying we'd "roll out the red carpet" for French workers fleeing
higher taxes
The same website now says EU is rolling out red carpet for Brits

I voted remain

Why?
Bigger Market- currently 20% of our trainees come from EU countries.
Solidarity - 75th anniversary of the Somme. I am European!
Live / Work - Focus of this talk - I regard myself a digital nomad

Escape from UK

I wanna escape from the UK and I'm probably not the only one...
Cost of Living
Joie de vivre

Berlin

Austin

Toronto

San Francisco

Boston

Tel Aviv

Los Angeles

Amsterdam

Montreal

Paris

What could possibly appeal to British web developers?

Is Lille well positioned to benefit?
What could possibly appeal to British web developers?
2011 helped setup Libertrip
The first e-commerce platform for Travel
Euro 1.15 = £1
70% less pay than London day rates
Ruby on Rails application
Idea is you plan trips, share with your friends, book hotels and
flights in a social way.
Got a break, live and work abroad and I loved it!
Couchsurfing
Parties / Bars
Fun place to live and work
Economical, ecological

What was it like to join a French company as a Brit?

Language barrier

My boss asked me on my first day: "As tu un PC?"...
He was probably worried he'd hired an 'expert' who didn't know what a PC was!
Later I said: "Je propose que je mettre un job dans ton cul"
Do you know what this is? I tried to say that it was preserved vegetables.
"Mon nourriture prefere c'est des legumes mettre dans un preservatif"
Next one is lead with ... "and Ceci n'est jamais une pipe"

"Digital Nomad" != "Location Independent"
So you don't have to backpack around, earning just enough for your
next ticket...
http://locationindependent.com
We are Lea & Jonathan Woodward, a British couple with two young kids, Mali & Samson.
We didn’t think “nomadic” accurately described what we were doing – running our business online from wherever we travelled to – and so we came up with the term, Location Independent*, instead.

“We knew that there were plenty of places in the world where you can live on a lot less than we were earning and have the same, if not a better standard of living. So we asked ourselves:
What if we left the UK for one of these places and continued to run our existing businesses?”

Bingo

We Got Coders

Started in 2013

Immersive, intensive training with paid work experience

We train 30 web professionals a year

100% of our trainees who completed the 6 month course have been made job offers as Ruby devs

Our goal is to be the leading provider of Web Development consultants in the UK

Our Approach

Full time immersive courses

Live-in with the team

Pair programming

Industry best-practices

Mentor support in work experience

Tempsford Mill

Grade II listed Mill House

On an island in Bedfordshire

2 classroom facilities

Accommodation for 9

Digital Escapee?
Living in the mansion
No commute
Food provided
Community of developers
Still near city - but the advantages of country life
Epicurean lifestyle